The Good Son
by Kansas42
Summary: Nick has to go back to Texas. Heavy Nick story, but other characters from CSI in beginning and end.
1. Going Home

So, this is a heavy nick-centered, angst story. Most of it takes place in texas, but there are parts with the other CSI's in Vegas too. This is supposed to happen before Mea Culpa. Oh, and I don't own any of these people. As if that weren't obvious.

I.

They're all worried about me. I can tell.

Catherine makes sympathetic, motherly gestures. She offers to talk and her voice loses that sharpness, that brittleness, that is so characteristic of her. She sounds like she's cooing, trying to make everything okay by just talking softer. I tell her I'm doing fine and she pretends to accept that, but I know she doesn't because her voice still doesn't sound sharp when she asks me to get her some gloves.

Greg and Sara also ask if I want to talk, though Sara almost looks afraid as though I might say yes, so I don't. Greg actually sounds genuine when he asks, but I can't imagine talking to him for more than five minutes without one of us making a joke. Serious discussions aren't our long suit, and I'd rather not change anything now. There have been enough changes, of late.

Warrick, naturally, is the most subtle of any of them. He treated me to a burger yesterday and I caught a couple penetrating glances, as if he could see inside me as easily as the evidence. I don't fool him into thinking I'm okay but he doesn't push because that's just not Warrick. I appreciate that and find myself hanging out more with him than the others, but I don't open up either. I don't want to talk about this. I just want it to be over.

It's Grissom, of course, who is the most obvious. His number of obscure riddles have shot up, as if he can test to see what stage of grieving I'm in. He gives me penetrating looks to, only instead of glancing he stares, as if I'm a bug under the microscope. I avoid running into him in the lab and thank whatever lucky stars I have left that I don't end up working the same cases with him.

I'm tired a little more than normal but I'm doing okay. I knew this day was coming and I've made at least a little bit of peace with it. Mostly, I just don't want to go back. I'd do anything to not have to go back home.

But I have to because he's dead, and I'm the good son, or I used to be. I haven't really been the good soon in about three years. But I still have that obligation to my family, that duty to go back.

I have to go home to Texas.

II.

Warrick and I are casually chatting about Monday night football when Grissom spots me. Before I can tell Warrick that I need to run, Grissom walks over and asks, "Nick? Can I see you a minute in my office?"

I look at Warrick and he shrugs. I say goodbye to him and follow Grissom into his office. He sits down at his desk and stares at me, that bug under the microscope stare yet again. He seems content with staying silent and I want to say something to break the quiet, and more importantly, his stare, but I can't for the life of me think of anything.

Finally, Grissom shifts position and asks, "When does your plane leave?"

I don't know why he's asking me this. I've told him already.

"Three o'clock tomorrow." When Grissom doesn't respond, I think maybe he's having trouble with scheduling or something. "I'll only be a couple of days. I'm back Wednesday, ready to roll." I try to wear a comforting smile on my face but it seems to fall flat. Which is unusual. I've always been good at smiling when I wasn't feeling happy.

"Nick, you can take more time off if you need it."

What's left of my false smile disappears completely. "I don't."

Grissom nods slowly. "What did you say your father died of, Nick? Heart attack, wasn't it?"

"Stroke," I correct. "His second." Grissom continues his probing stare and I want to snap at him to stop it, I'm FINE, but I don't say anything. You don't snap at the boss. He says jump, you say how high. The way the world works.

Still, I can't help thinking Grissom's doing some kind of obscure riddle again, because I can not shake the idea that Grissom would ever mix up a cause of death in any circumstance, victim or not. As he watches me, I realize he's trying to outwait me, trying to silence me into speaking. Gil Grissom, the king of solitude, the hermit of all hermits, is trying to get me to open up.

I can't keep myself from smirking bitterly. When you think about it, it's pretty fucking amusing.

I ignore Grissom's silence and say nothing. When he finally realizes that I'm not going to budge, Grissom leans forward at his desk and says, "Nick, I'm trying to help you."

And it's a weird thing to notice at the time but I start to wonder when exactly it was that Grissom stopped calling me 'Nicky'. Grissom's voice is soft right then, not cooing like Catherine's, but gentle and I almost say something right then because Grissom being emotional or sensitive with anyone but Sara seems wrong somehow, but then Grissom continues and he sounds like he's quoting from a textbook.

"Losing a parent is a difficult time in one's life. . ."

And this I can repel. This is the Grissom I'm used to, the mechanical, easy to understand Grissom. I can refuse to open up when Gris doesn't sound like he really cares.

"Really, Gris, I'm fine," I say, and the false smile I couldn't make before reaches my face this time. "I mean, life goes on, right?"

Grissom sighs, as if he knows he's lost a battle. "Yes," he says, "it does."

When he doesn't speak again, I know I'm tired of waiting and I take my cute. "I've got some work to finish before I leave tonight," I say and Grissom nods, still looking just slightly defeated.

"Okay, Nick."

As I start to walk away, Grissom calls out to me. I close my eyes, open them, and turn around. Grissom's sitting there, looking for all the world like he wished he was a people person just this once so he would know the right words to say. I could have told him there were no right words but didn't bother. I didn't want a caring Grissom to emerge.

"Have a safe flight," Grissom says. We both know that's not what he wanted to say.

"Right," I tell him and leave his office. I have work to finish.

Because tomorrow I get to have a safe flight back to Texas for one, sad funeral.

The good son's coming home again.


	2. Mommy Dearest

Chapter 2 is here: just to let anyone who cares have an advance warning: I didn't make Nick's mother very nice. At all. In fact, I was kind of mean to Nick in general. Angst is such fun. Oh, and I forgot to mention this in the first chapter, but for this story the end of the episode The Stalker is a little different.

"Chap 2"

I.

My mom picks me up at the airport. She looks skinnier than I remember, her bones nearly sticking out of her skin. I wonder briefly if her newfound thinness arose from grief or just a diet that she had picked up that had actually worked for her. Her hair is gray and short; her lips thin and pale. There is nothing in her eyes that mirror a happiness to see me.

I ask her how she's doing as we wait for my luggage.

She laughs dryly, never bothering to look at me. "Nicky," she says, "I thought you ran away to Vegas to be a '_hero_', not a comedian." She put up her fingers and made quote signs around the word 'hero'.

My jaw clenches and I try to not be angry with her, though that venture is not particularly successful. "Mom, I didn't run away," I tell her, trying to keep my teeth from gritting as well. "Going to Vegas was a great opportunity for me. The lab I work at-"

"Is the second best in the country, I know," my mom says snidely. "Something to make any mother proud." The sarcasm in her voice is too thick to ignore.

"Yeah, Mom, it should," I snap, now glaring at her instead of the spinning luggage. "You should be proud of me for making my own choices and being successful, not just resentful because I didn't follow the same path as Dad-"

Mom slaps me right then, hard, before I can finish my sentence. The diamond on her wedding ring cuts my chin and I step backwards, my hand going to the blood that begins to trickle down my skin slowly. "Don't you ever speak your father's name," she hissed at me. "You don't deserve to speak it."

I stare at her. She breathes heavily, as if she's just run a race, and her eyes are no longer cold and impartial but glaring at me with as much love as a girl has for her brother's murderer. I remember her making me peanut butter and jelly when I was a kid and treating me as though I was special, as though she loved me. This woman in front of me did not look like my mother.

I felt eyes watching us and my mom and I suddenly become very aware that we were standing in the middle of the airport with a thousand people walking around. My mother took a breath and looked away from me, her glare faltering but her composure not yet retained. I managed to take my eyes away from her face but it's hard because I want to be able to find something wrong with it, something that proves she's an imposter, so I can yell, "You're not my mother!" and find the woman I remember from childhood.

I look back to the where the suitcases are and see my luggage slowly circling.

"There it is," I say quietly, and after I pick it up, we leave.

II.

"Your brothers and sisters are here," my mother says to me while we're driving down the street. It's the first words she's said to me since she slapped me in the airport. "You can sleep in your old room with David tonight before the funeral tommorow."

I don't know if I want to talk. I do anyway and my voice comes out slightly hoarse, as if rusted. "How are they?" I ask, curious about my siblings. I haven't seen or spoken to any of them in a very long time.

"As to be expected," my mother says. "They're in mourning." She gives me a pointed look to show how inadequate my grief is, and I shake my head and look out the window. A few minutes later, she sighs.

"Jennifer's doing well," my mom says, her voice a touch less sharp. "She just got promoted again, and she's making a good deal of money. Marianne thinks that a promotion might be coming her way too. She keeps hinting that partner might be around the corner. She didn't bring Carl with her. I think he couldn't get away from work. Lilly's about five months pregnant-"

"Again!" I interrupt, immediately laughing, and my mom glares at me. My laughter abruptly fades into silence. 'Right,' I tell myself. 'No laughing. Dad's dead, and I'm not really welcome anymore'.

"Yes," my mom says, her voice ice once again. "She thinks it's going to be a girl this time. Michael keeps telling her that she's been wrong before and she's wrong now but you know Lilly. She's got her mind set on the baby being a girl. David brought Kathleen and the twins with him. Kathy isn't working anymore but David makes more than enough to support them. And Richard, of course, is doing well." Mom stops talking for a moment and I watch as she warms up a bit, talking about Richard. "He's dating a beautiful young woman named Sandra, and he just got a commendating for bravery three weeks ago. He's a REAL hero, you know, out there in the face of danger every day, doing REAL police work. . ."

"Oh, give it a rest," I tell her quietly, and surprisingly she does. I guess she still remembers when I used to be the prodigy child, the good son, the favorite. I used to hate it because I felt pressured all the time and I knew my brothers and sisters resented the hell out of me for it, but now, playing the black sheep, I missed my mother thinking I was worth something.

We were silent for awhile. I waited, but finally I had to ask, "What about Luke?" I tried to keep my voice even, but I don't think I did a very good job. It had been a very long time since I talked to Luke. I wasn't sure if I had ever planned on talking to him again.

"Luke?" my mom laughs. "Luke's the same as ever. He works at that shitty roadside garage and spends most of his time over at Hank's Pub. He's living across town in some rundown trailer where all the crooks and whores live. In fact, I think Richard just made a drug bust over there." My mom sniffs, clearly disdaining herself from anyone who didn't live in the upper middle class, and then looks at me. "Still, at least Luke visited his father before the end came."

That's it. That's just too much. I can't stand it any more.

"I tried to come out, Mom!" I yell then, too infuriated to keep silent. "I tried to come a couple of weeks after the first stroke and what did you do? You told me not to bother, not to waste another minute on this family again. You told me I wasn't even a part of this family anymore!"

"And what were you doing that was so important?" Mom yells back at me. "Working at your stupid, pathetic job that you think is more important than your own flesh and blood! If you had been in any kind of accident, any kind at all, your father would have been in Vegas before you could say 'Wayne Newton'! And you! You couldn't make time for three whole weeks before you could visit your father, the man who raised you, the man who sacrificed for you! I'm surprised you could even find time in your busy schedule to fit this annoying funeral in!"

"Mom, you don't know anything about me."

"And what's to know?" Mom looks like she's speaking pure venom. "You're a spoiled brat, a selfish, self-important bastard who doesn't give the first thought to his family. Where's the son I raised, the good, courteous son? Where's NICK?"

"He died 27 years ago," I snap, and then abruptly shut my mouth.

Did I just say that?

I didn't just say that.

My mom doesn't appear to notice my horror. "What idiocy are you babbling now?" she asks. When I don't move, she looks at me closer and asks, "Nick?" Her voice is almost close to caring.

I close my eyes, shake off the memory that's fighting to have me relive it, and refuse to look at Mom. "Never mind," I say flatly, opening my eyes and staring resolutely out the window. "Never mind."

We're silent the rest of the way home.


	3. Dinner, Dishes, and More Dilemma

My mom makes chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes for dinner but retires to her bedroom early, claiming a headache. She's actually pissed off because the first thing she made clear when we got home was that she wanted Richard to do my father's eulogy, since he was the good son. It's a phrase she never tires of speaking. Unfortunately for Mom, my father left instructions that he still wanted me to do the eulogy. My mother appealed to my siblings, trying to get them to agree that Dad wasn't in the place of mind to make that decision after the first stroke scrambled his brains, but everybody except Richard thought we should respect Dad's wishes. Mom hasn't spoken to me since.

Now the rest of us the Stokes clan, minus the spouses and children, who had departed to the living room, sat in the dining room silently, chewing food without tasting it, an unsettled tension almost visible in the air. Finally, Lilly broke the silence, as Lilly would always inevitably do.

"So, Nick, love the hair," she teases, breaking the ice. Everybody started to laugh.

I rub my mostly shaved head. "Yeah, that's a long story," I say, missing the feel of having something on top of my head but stubble. "I can't wait till it grows back." I glance at my younger sister, Jennifer, who had been known for her golden curls when she was younger and now had hair almost as short as David's. The cut, which would have made Marianne look butch and Lilly like a pixie, made Jennifer look in charge, the way an executive should.

Jennifer notices the direction of my stare and her hand went unconsciously to where her curls used to be. "Yeah, I cut 'em off a couple of years ago," she says. The room became quiet again. Another reminder on who hasn't been in home in over three years now.

Richard clears his throat loudly. "So, how have things been, Nick?" he asks, his tone pompous and arrogant, the masculine version of our mother. He plays with his wine glass idly, his chest puffed out like a bird trying to show off how important he is. "Has it been fun living in Vegas? Like living in a permanent vacation?"

"Shut up, Richard," David says flatly, draining the last of his wine glass.

"No, I will not," Richard says indignantly. "The rest of us have been here all this time for Mom and Dad. We've sacrificed for them; we're the ones who've been in pain. And Nick just waltzes back into our lives like everything's okay, like he didn't just abandon his family-"

"Give me a break," Lilly says before I could speak and we all look at her. Lilly has always been the gentle one, the one never to speak a harsh word. "You're not upset that Nick left to go live in Vegas. You're just upset because now he's come back, you're worried that he might steal back his title as Golden Boy, and you would just have to go back to playing the bitch who works hard for no attention. But personally, I think all that's bullshit. I don't give a fuck who the favored boy is because Dad's dead, and that's what we should be thinking about."

There was almost a stunned silence while Richard flushed and crossed his arms like a little boy. Lilly continues to glare at him for a minute and then abruptly leaves the table. Richard glares sullenly at where she had been and also left, walking upstairs in the opposite direction of Lilly. Marianne and David look at each other, shrug, and followethem out, both going to try and calm them down, leaving Jennifer and I staring at each other.

Jennifer smile cynically. "Ain't reunions fun?" she drawls, and I shake my head and also leave the table.

II.

As my other siblings are off being with their families or catching up on work, Lilly and I wash dishes and clean up after dinner, our old chores from when we were kids. Lilly and I had always gotten along best. We were both the dreamers of the family; the kids who grew up and still believed in idealism, in a world that could be perfect. Such notions didn't run large in my family. We couldn't even prove happiness in our own home.

Lilly doesn't seem angry like she had been at the dinner table but she is uncharacteristically silent. Thinking of the fun we used to have washing dishes, I splash her with water, drenching her long brown hair. Lilly giggles and quickly retaliates by pouring a glass of soapy water on m head.

"Hey!" I say, laughing . "Look what you've done to what's left of my hair!"

She looks at me judiciously. "It looks better," she decides. "The soap bubbles give it a touch of class.

I snort. "Right." Lilly begins to dry some dishes and I get down on my knees to clean up the water we had spilled on the ground, leaving my eyes level with her slightly protruding belly. "Mom says you think it's going to be a girl this time."

"I refuse to have another boy," she says. "I need a girl to balance things out. Actually, I need three girls to balance things out. I am concentrating hard and am sure that she'll come out with an XX chromosome."

I laugh. "What are you planning on naming her?"

She shrugs. "I'm not sure yet," she says. "I'd like something original. I thought Gwyneth naming her kid 'Apple' was kind of cute."

"So what? You're thinking Grape? Tangerine?"

Lilly gives me a look but it quickly disintegrates into laughter. Her gaze turns fond, nostalgic. "I've missed you Nick. Texas ain't the same without you."

My smile fades a bit from my face. "Yeah," I say. "I've missed you too." And I have. I've missed them all. David, and his science fiction books, Jennifer and her blunt honesty. Marianne, Lilly, even Richard, because I could remember a time when Richard and I had played football together, and his voice has not been proud and scornful. But I missed Lilly the most, Lilly and her thousand children, her determination to make he world a better place. I missed Mom and Dad and all of Texas. I even missed Luke, though I tried not to admit it.

I turn away to put up some plates and feel Lilly's eyes on me. "Why didn't you come home when Mom called, Nick? Why didn't you even call back for nearly a week? I know you weren't just busy at work, so you don't even try with me. I know you, Nick. Nothing is more important than your family, not to you. Why didn't you tell Mom the truth about why you didn't come?"

"I tried," I say flatly. "I tried and she wouldn't listen. She never gave me the chance to explain. She lost faith in me, just like that." I snapped my fingers. "To lose that much faith that quickly, that soon, makes me wonder if she ever really loved me at all."

"Don't start that," Lilly says. "Mom and Da. . .they loved you the best and you know it." She looks down at her feet, biting her lip softly. "I think even us kids loved you the best, although we may have hated you for it."

I know this but I don't want to. "Did you hate me?" I ask and she looks at me with a smile, a real one.

"Nah. How could I? You're too cute."

I laugh then, relieved, at least a little. "It's good to see you, Lilly."

"It's good to be seen," Lilly says and is quiet for a while. I watch her frowning, an unhappy, nervous expression forming on her face, and immediatly think this can't be good. "What?" I ask her.

"Wellllll. . ." she says slowly and suddenly I know what she's going to ask before she does. I immediately shake my head.

"No."

"Nick, look, I know how angry you are at him and how hurt you were when. . ." She breaks off.

"When what? When my little brother, who I used to read bedtime stories to, slept with the woman I asked to marry me? Jeez, I don't know how I could have overreacted so much to that? I don't know how I could be angry or hurt or-"

"Nick," she interrupts, sounding tired, and I stop and look away. I don't want to think about Luke. I would think Dad and Mom would be enough.

"Look," she says, "he's not doing great. I mean, I know Mom makes him out to sound like he's two steps away from being a homeless junkie, and he's not, but he hasn't been happy. He's moody, irritable, spends way to much time down at Hank's. I don't think he's even had a girlfriend since Julia."

"If you're asking me to be concerned about Luke's love life, you're asking the wrong person," I say flatly.

"I'm not," Lilly says. "I'm asking you to be concerned about Luke. Nick, he hasn't even been designing his cars."

_That _took me by surprise. Luke, the ultimate gearhead, loved his cars. You could barely pry him apart from an engine. They were his babies, his dreams. If he was upset, I'd expect him to retreat further into his world of playing with cars. The fact that he wasn't at all. . .

"Since when?"

"Since you left."

I try to tell myself this isn't my problem, but dear God. How long since I left for Vegas? How long since I fled from home?

Six, seven years?

"Have you seen him since Dad?" I don't finish the question. She knows what I mean.

"Yes. He spent a whole one night here. Mom was quick to jump on his case, as usual, and so did Richard. " Lilly shook her head. "I don't like what Richard's become."

"Yeah," I agree, "me neither."

"Look, Nick, I know how much I'm going to sound like a shrink, and I know how much you hate shrinks (though I really don't know why) but I think Luke has some, y'know, unresolved issues with Dad." Before I can interrupt, Lilly continues impatiently, "I know, I know we all do. But you have to admit how Luke's had it bad with Mom and Dad. And with Dad gone, Luke doesn't have any way of resolving those problems. And. . .and I thin you're the best person for him to talk to?"

"For Chrissake, _why_?"

"Because you two have your own issues to work out," Lilly says. "Because you were angry and hurt. And because I think Luke maybe loved and hated you the most out of all of us."

I shake my head. "It's not fair," I say, knowing I sound like a toddler, not really caring much anyway. "It's not fair that I have to go comfort him. He was the one who did this. He was the one who betrayed me, and I'm supposed to go save his soul? I love him, Lilly, I do, but I don't want to do this for him."

"I'm not asking you too."

I raise an eyebrow. "You're not?"

"No. I'm asking you to do it for me."

And there wasn't a lot I could say to that.


	4. Luke

Hank's Pub is the closest bar to home, and probably the grungiest in Texas. I haven't been there in years. Even when my cop buddies and I would go out for a beer (or several), we would usually go to more upscale places than Hank's. But Luke had always liked it there. Said it fit with his soul.

I step inside the bar and immediately spot Luke sitting at the counter. He is slouched over, his head in one his hands, his eyes covered by his hair which he had always worn just a little long in front. Empty shot glasses make a half circle around his arms, and he's currently nursing what looked like another shot of whiskey.

There are only a few people sitting in the bar and none of them are sitting anywhere near Luke. The bartender, a tall, bearded man who is just a touch on the hefty side, looks up at me. "You need directions, son?" he asks me, his Texas accent a good deal thicker than my own. "You don't look like you're from around here."

"I used to be," I say. "A long time ago."

Luke's head lifts up very quickly and he pauses. Then, slowly, he turns around on his stool and looks at me. A moment passes.

"Jesus Christ," he drawls, "what are you doing here?"

I don't answer. Instead, I walk up to the bar and sit down next to him and look at the bartender. "Can I get a beer?" I ask, and he nods, looking back and forth between Luke and I. Obviously, my little brother is a regular around here, and I can't imagine he gets many visitors. After all, who would come? Mom? Richard?

The bartender serves me a glass and I drink a sip. It tastes warm and a little flat but somehow having some alcohol in me makes me feel just a little bit better as I'm sitting next to Luke for the first time in six, maybe seven years. Luke is watching me, a dryly amused smile on his face.

"You know," he says, "I've been sitting here dreading going to the funeral, not because of Dad, but because I'd have to face you and deal with some kind of confrontation. I was starting to think maybe I just wouldn't even go. It's not like anyone would care. Mom certainly wouldn't be disappointed. I think she might even be happy, being able to prove herself right about me yet again." He chuckles, bitterly, and finishes off his whiskey. "I was going to go to all this trouble to avoid having to see you and here you are, coming to see me. That just beats it all." He laughs again but I don't join him. My fingers clench a little around my glass of beer. "So, why have you ventured into the depths of this unholy place, big brother? Why are you here?"

"Lilly," I say.

He nods. "That figures. You and Lilly were always like peas in a pod. Bestest of friends." He orders another whiskey from the bartender, who barely pretends to be washing glasses as he watches us silently. "So, Lilly wants you to what, make peace with me, drag my sorry ass home?"

I shrug. "I guess." I'm having trouble making my voice sound softer. Every word comes out harsh and clipped. Luke notices, but to his credit, he doesn't call me on it. I'm glad. I'm not sure I could take that right now, not after today, not from him.

"So. . ." Luke says after a good pause of silence with a weak chuckle, "how's life been treating you?"

I look at him with a certain amount of contempt and take another sip of my beer. "Look, man, I'm doing this for Lilly, all right? I don't need some false bonding moment, okay?"

I try not to look at him but I can't help but notice the expression on Luke's face. It almost seems to crumple, like a piece of paper used to being thrown regularly in the trash. He covers it quickly but not quickly enough. "Yeah," he says, his voice bitter. "Yeah, I should have known you wouldn't care. You just want me to be unhappy. You've always wanted me to be unhappy. Well, you know what, man? Fuck you! I don't need to go home to a bunch of fuckin' assholes who haven't given a shit about me since the fuckin' day I was born."

I was starting to feel just a touch ashamed of myself until Luke's outburst. Now I look at him incredulously. "You want me to feel sorry for you, is that it? Well, sorry, Luke, but when you screwed my fiancée, you sort of lost any right to ask for my godamned sympathy. You hurt me, Luke, not the other way around, so let's get things straight right now, okay?"

Luke opens his mouth to respond and then shuts it. He drinks his shot of whiskey. I close my eyes. I didn't want our first talk in years to go down like this. "Look," I say, "I can't change the fact that I'm still mad at you. I just, I can't. And I know you're mad, or resentful or whatever towards me. I get that. And all of this shit we've got between us, I don't think it's gonna be fixed in five minutes at some crummy bar. " At this point I remember the less-than-subtle eavesdropping bartender and I look at him. "Sorry."

He shrugs. "Ain't my bar."

"Anyway," I say to Luke, "we've still got stuff and that's fine. We don't have to have everything forgiven and forgotten already. I mean, it's just way too soon. But we're brothers, man, and Lilly's right. This isn't supposed to be about us. This is supposed to be about Dad. So, do you think that if we try, we can try to be cordial, at least for just a little while?"

Luke looks at me out of the corner of his eye and then nods once, slowly. "All right," he says.

We're quiet again. After awhile, and once the bartender appears to get bored and goes to snoop on the other customers, Luke looks at me and asks, "So, how are you doing? I mean, about Dad?"

I shake my head. "I don't know, man. It doesn't feel real yet, y'know?"

"Yeah," Luke says. "You doin' the eulogy tomorrow?"

"Yeah," I say. "Mom and Robert are having a collective apoplexy."

"Mom's still pissed at you?"

"Perpetually," I say. "I think Mom's forgiveness only comes after a dead body. Hers or mine, I don't know."

Luke laughs so hard he spits his whiskey and I smile at the sight before it fades into a frown. I remember when he would have been spitting milk instead and I wonder how often he does come to this bar. Luke wipes his hand across his mouth and smiles wryly. "Sorry, man. That's not really funny."

"It's okay," I tell him. "Might as well laugh while you can, right?"

"Yeah," he says and downs another drink. I glance at the empty shot glasses around him. Luke doesn't really seem drunk but I don't think much of it's hit him yet. Knowing him, he'll probably be just fine and then totally gone in under a minute.

"We should get you home," I say and Luke's laughter all but disappears as he follows my gaze to the shot glasses. "Lilly says you've been spending a lot of time here."

"Yeah, well, it's as good as place as any," he says. "Nobody bothers you or tries to fuck with you. And if they do, well, that's okay. That's what a good bar fight is for."

He turns to look at me, and I can see the large bruise on his forehead that I somehow failed to notice before. Some CSI I am. I chalk it up to stress and decide not to ask how he acquired it. "You ready to go?"

Luke doesn't answer at once. He's back to looking at his shot glasses and I'm not sure as I haven't been gifted with telepathy, but I think he's mentally calculating how much his blood level is for how much booze he's had. Luke was always pretty good with math and science. He could have done better for himself than just a mechanic but he just loved those cars. Besides, I think our parents had their effect too.

As if reading my mind, Luke asks abruptly, "Do you remember that year we did the science fair together?"

I nod. It was Luke's first science fair. He was about nine, or so, in the fourth grade. I was already in ninth grade and had done a fair few of those things before, so I offered to help him out with his project. Luke picked the same thing I had the first time I had a science fair.

"Sure," I say. "The volcano."

"Yeah," Luke says. "That volcano." His words are beginning to slur noticeably and I don't think it's going to be long before he loses all lucidity all together. "I had so much fun workin' on that stupid thing with you. We spent hours on it, d'ya remember? An' you coulda been working on your own project but you didn't seem to really care. You said you were having fun just hanging out with me."

"I was," I say, and am not all surprised to hear my voice crack a bit.

"And then the fair came," Luke says, "and my project got second place, and yours got fourth in your science fair. An' you had like three first place science projects in a row or something and Dad came over and told me you had done badly because you spent so much time helping me out. That I had screwed up not only my only project but also yours, and you must just hate me because it." His slur becomes thicker but the bitterness is clear and present in his voice. "I did everything wrong. Just like I always did. And every time it happened, every fuckin' time I did something wrong, you would be there looking patient and understanding, never boasting about how good you did, like Richard would. You'd never tell me what a fuck up I was. You were always just kind. You always just saw what Dad refused to see."

Luke's throat clenches. "He must have told me six thousand times a day how I fucked up this or I fucked up that until I just couldn't stand it anymore, an' I wanted to hate him. I wanted to fuckin' hate him and be glad when he finally died, when he finally got out of my fuckin' face, and out of my life. I wanted to hate him so bad, him and Mom and you. . .I wanted to hate you all, but now that he's dead. . .I don't want him dead. I want him back."

Luke's face crumples again and he's pretty close to crying. The bartender is back and this time Luke seems to notice. "What the fuck are you lookin' at?" Luke yells at him and suddenly gets to his feet, or tries. He staggers, and trying to get his balance, his hand waves out and knocks a couple of the shot glasses off the counter to the floor.

"Hey!" the barkeep says as the glass breaks on the floor. I stand up quickly and steady Luke before he falls over.

"I'll pay for those," I tell the bartender and pay the amount he quotes, which is probably really more than they really cost. I hold on to Luke and notice his right hand is bleeding pretty badly. "You got a first aid kit?" I ask the bartender, who snorts at me.

"You kidding? We don't got shit back here but booze and peanuts."

"Great," I say sarcastically, and then turn back to Luke. "Well, never mind. I got a kit in my car. C'mon."

Luke keeps his eyes on the floor, careful to not look up at me. "Can you just drop me off at my place?" he asks, his eyes searching the ground.

"I can," I say, "but I know the girls would love to have you home. Lilly especially wants to make sure you're okay."

"I don't want Mom to see me," Luke says, his voice quiet and ashamed. "I don't want her to see me drunk. I don't need her bitching. Her righteousness."

"Well," I say, "why don't we just drive around for a bit? Mom never stays up past ten o'clock anyway. We'll just go home after we're sure she's asleep."

Luke doesn't respond for a minute. Finally, he looks up and smiles at me. It's the smile of someone definitely plastered, but it's also so utterly grateful looking that some of the anger I've been carrying for the last six years just disintegrates like the broken glass on the floor. Not all of it; I can't forgive that easily what's been tangled and tarnished for so long, but I can't help feeling sorry for my little brother, the one I never thought I could feel sorry for again.

"Okay," Luke agrees, and I help him out to my car.


	5. Perfection

Off: So, next chap is up. This is mostly just a conversation between Nick and another one of his siblings. The funeral will be next chap, and then after that we should be back in Vegas again. Thanks for all the reviews; I appreciate it.

"Perfection"

I wake up the next morning with the sun in my eyes and an ache in my jaw that I had hoped would disappear by the time I got up. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. I sit up a little in my bed and rub my chin tenderly, trying not to aggravate the pain.

After I had put Luke in the car the night before, I had drove around the town a bit, as promised. This wasn't much of a hardship; I didn't really want to see Mom, either, or Richard, for that matter. Luke passed out long before we actually got home, and I half carried, half dragged him into the house and put him to bed in his old bedroom. Mom had thankfully been asleep for all this. Unfortunately, Richard hadn't.

I hear a knock on the bedroom door. "Yeah?" I ask, hoping it's anybody but Mom or Rich. Or Luke, for that matter. I'm still not sure exactly how I feel with our sort-of reconciliation. Things have been stranger since I got back into Texas. Thankfully, I'm leaving later tonight.

The door opens. It's Jennifer, looking like she just got out of bed, though I bet she's been awake for a lot longer than I have. There are dark circles under her eyes and I realize that she, like Mom, looks skinnier than I remember, though Jennifer was never particularly pudgy. I wonder if I ended up staying here longer than planned, I might lose a couple extra pounds around the waist myself. Maybe staying in Texas was the ultimate diet plan.

"Hey," Jennifer says as she closes the door behind her. She sits at the foot of the bed and takes a better look at me, peering closely at my face. "Richard do that?" she asks.

"Is it bruised?"

"Only if purple isn't your natural skin tone," Jennifer says dryly. "What happened? Marianne didn't say what you two were fighting about. Was it the eulogy?"

"In a way. But mostly, it was about Luke. And me."

Jennifer's eyebrows raise so high they almost disappear into her blonde hair. "So you did drag Luke home? I thought I heard snoring coming from his room. I knew Lilly wanted you to, but I didn't think you would."

I decide not to try and respond to this. "You went to bed early," I comment instead. "I remember the days you couldn't sleep before midnight."

She shrugged. "I've been more tired lately."

"You look it."

Jennifer smiled wryly at me. "Are you psychoanalyzing me, Nicky? Has Vegas changed your perception on shrinks?"

I laugh and shake my head. "No, no. I still don't like headshrinkers. I just noticed that you seemed more tired. That's all."

Jennifer tilts her head to the side. "I was seeing a psychiatrist once," she said in an offhand manner. "For a little while."

"You mean like dating?"

"I mean like paying," Jennifer says. "I thought maybe. . .maybe things would change. That those people might know what they were doing or something. I don't know. I don't know what I thought was going to happen. It didn't." She lapses into silence for a bit and then looks thoughtfully at my jaw. "So, what did he say? Richard, I mean."

"Oh," I say. I don't really want to go into it. "Just some stuff about Luke and me. How we're no good, not part of the family. Things like that."

I don't feel like talking about how much what Richard had said hurt me. How Luke had always been a good for nothing nobody. How after Luke had slept with Julia, I couldn't take the pressure anymore, of being a part of the family, being a cop on the street, being the perfect son. Richard said I showed what he had always known: I was always a selfish jerk, only looking out for myself. I hadn't cared about Dad, I hadn't cared about Mom. And though Richard never said it, I got the distinct impression he was feeling like I didn't care about him.

I don't tell Jennifer any of this but she seems to understand what I don't say, because Jennifer has always been too perceptive for her own good. "It probably infuriated him," she says calmly. "You going and forgiving Luke after what he did. He probably thinks if he had slept with Julia, you would never have forgiven him. And maybe you wouldn't have. Luke's always been the black sheep of the family. Richard's just a wannabe. Nobody loves a wannabe."

"I love Richard," I say, and as soon as I say it, I know it's true.

"I know," Jennifer says, "but do you feel sorry for him? Do you care that he's always had to play second fiddle to your lead, that Mom and Dad never looked at him with adoring eyes until you left for Vegas. Richard wasn't hated the way that Luke was, but he was ignored as if he didn't exist at all. Nothing he did compared to you. But I bet you don't feel sorry for him, not the way you feel sorry for Luke. Even though Luke did what he did, "

I don't answer. I don't know what I feel.

"It's okay, you know," Jennifer says. Her voice sounds cool, as if everything's anything but okay. "I don't feel sorry for him, either. I wouldn't feel sorry for anybody here. There's nothing pity can change."

I look at my sister. "Why are you sad, Jen?"

Her eyebrows rise up again. A sardonic expression, a constant companion of hers since adolescence, is back on her face again. "Why are you?" she counters. "Why are you obsessed with keeping your secrets? I know you almost as well as Lilly does, certainly better than Richard. You draw back what shouldn't be hidden. You pretend that everything is all right, that you are fine and dandy and perfect. You've been doing it for years, almost as long as I can remember. What did you need so desperately to keep private that you wouldn't tell Mom the real reason you didn't come?"

I shake my head. "You say I do a good job pretending, but everybody here seems so sure that it wasn't work keeping me from seeing Dad that I'm beginning to wonder. Everybody except Mom, that is. She knows what she knows."

"That just means she's obtuse," Jen says bluntly. "If Mom opened her eyes enough to see beyond what she wanted to see, she could tell that you've been lying, just like the rest of us can. But she can't because Mom's never been like that. Dad wasn't either, you know. They were both equally blind to everything but your radiance. Your perfection that you've worked so long to create. Poor Richard was never so good at acting. He's too simple to imagine a more interesting persona."

I don't know why that angers me but it does. Maybe it's her voice. I know exactly who she sounds like. "You know, you're as bad as Mom sometimes," I tell her, and her eyes close gently.

"I know," she says quietly, her voice full of a soft regret that quickly changes back to bitterness. "Good thing I haven't had kids yet, huh?"

"Jennifer. . ." I began to say and trail off. I don't know what I want to tell her.

"Don't," she says. "It doesn't matter. We are who we are, you know. Marianne's faithful. David's silent. Lilly's sweet. Richard's second-rate. Luke's a loser. I'm bitter. And you're. . .you're perfect."

I keep silent and don't look up into her eyes. Jen stands up from the bed. "You know," she says, "most of the time I think men got it pretty easy. They don't give childbirth, they don't have periods. They have their rights and privileges handed out to them on little silver plates. I don't care what other people say; as a woman, it's still hard to get anywhere in work without being treated like a coffee-girl, or the secretary who gives blow jobs. Most of the time, anyway, I feel being a woman is kind of a drag, but here, in this house, I'm glad, I'm so glad I'm not a man. Marianne, Lilly, and I weren't as highly praised as you, we weren't loved like you, but we weren't asked to live up to you either. We had our good moments and our bad, but even in the worst of them we weren't asked to imitate your false perfection, to become our brother Nicholas Stokes. You and Richard and Luke . .it was like living in a place of cutthroats who did what they had to do to survive. Competition to be the alpha male was fierce. You'd do anything you had to to get our parent's attention."

"That's not true," I say, angry enough that I get up off the bed as well. I don't want to be compared to Richard, who hit me just last night, or Luke who slept with Julia. I would never have done those things. "I never did anything to them. I never tried to sabotage Luke or Richard."

"But you already had most of the attention, didn't you? Besides, I doubt there was an A on your report card that didn't have Mom and Dad's face shadowed behind it."

There isn't a lot I can say to that. I want to yell at her but I know she's speaking the truth. I try to get around this in a different way. "You didn't mention David," I tell her. "He's a man, too, in this house, and he very rarely got into the fights."

"That's true," Jennifer says. "I doubt David's got the intelligence for the game. I don't think he's clever enough to imagine a world where parents don't love their children equally."

"Stop it," I tell her sharply. "He's our brother."

"That doesn't mean it's not true," she says with a shrug. "But truth has always been subjective for you, hasn't it? You feel more than you think, Nicky, you always have. Sometimes I wondered at you becoming a CSI. I know you've got the head for it, but do you have the stomach?"

"Why are you like this?" I ask her bitterly, shaking my head. "Why are you so godammned vicious all the time?"

Jennifer's eyes falter then and she looks at the ground. "It's in the blood," she says quietly, almost to herself. "I don't know how you escaped it." She turns around, as if to leave, and I call out to her, asking her to stop. I don't want us to leave our conversation like this. I want at least one good conversation with a sibling that doesn't end up in getting drunk or getting punched.

Jennifer doesn't turn around but she does stop. "Mom said you said something strange in the car yesterday. Something about dying 27 years ago."

I feel myself swallow. "It's nothing," I lie automatically.

Jennifer turns and looks at me. "Is that what makes you so secretive? Is that where your need to be perfect started? What changed you, Nick? What changed you into this more beautiful, more exquisitely sad creature?"

I raise an eyebrow. "Poetry, Jen? From you?"

She laughs dryly. "We're all full of surprises," she says. "But no one greater than you. Who'd have thought you'd leave here and become even more despised than Luke? Even I didn't guess that one. I think everyone assumed you'd always be here; you were the heart of this home. Who'd know that the prodigal son would pull up his stakes and leave, never calling to talk, never looking back."

She walks to the door and then glances over her shoulder. "The funeral's at twelve," she said. "Mom wants to leave by eleven."

I call out Jennifer's name again but this time she ignores me and shuts the door behind her. Slowly, I sit back down on my bed and feel my jaw, still bruised and aching. I think of what Jennifer has said, and everything since I've come back here.

I suddenly miss Grissom and his strange excitement over disgusting things that would make most people shriek. Catherine and her low cut shirts; Greg and his insane ones. Sara and Warrick bantering, joking around after a case. I almost even miss Hodges and his annoying, nasal voice, just because he's a part of the world that I feel I've left behind.

I miss Vegas, the place I belong.

How did I ever call this place home?


	6. The Eulogy

"The Eulogy"

Glen Acres Cemetery is a large graveyard where Dad's plot was chosen, next to my grandparents and great grandparents. Everybody in the Stokes family for the last three generations has been buried here, and for a long time I assumed I would be to. Now, I'm not so sure. I didn't seem to be welcome with my family while I was alive, anymore. I wasn't sure if I'd be welcome when I was dead.

The group of people around Dad's plot is large. He had, of course, been a particularly influential and generally likeable man, at least to most people. He had a lot of friends and even more business associates, and it seemed that almost everyone who had ever once spoken "hello" to him is here. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. For some reason, Dad's death seems like it was meant to be private, even though he was often in the public eye. Maybe I just don't want anyone else to see what our family has hidden for so long, our disfunctionality under such a perfect mask of the all American family. I don't know.

Everyone is quiet while the minister speaks. A good deal of people in the crowd cry, but out of our family the only one to shed tears is Lilly. I almost want to make myself cry just so someone else near her is, so our family looks like we're in the proper state of grieving, but I just can't, not yet. I played best in our all American family, after all. Real men don't cry.

I can't make my eyes moisten but I also can't seem to take them off of the pine box that I know Dad's body is in. I know what a dead body looks like. Even the best make up artist can't make a dead person look asleep, not to me. And I know what that body will look like in about a week. I know all about the process of decay.

I try not to imagine my father rotting and fail. I don't want to remember him like that.

I don't know if I want to remember any of this. I want to put it all behind me. I want it to already be gone.

I have to get through it first.

The minister announces me as the son giving the eulogy and I don't move for a minute, very suddenly wishing that I had also argued that Richard take this burden, that I wasn't the good son anymore. I don't want to be here anymore, and I don't know what to say.

I make myself move slowly up to where the minister stands. He gives me what he probably believes is a comforting hand on my shoulder and backs away so I am alone in front of the crowd and the box.

The box that the body is in.

Dad is inside the box.

I remember Luke asking me how I was doing and my telling him it didn't feel real yet, as if it hadn't really happened, but now Dad's lying dead hidden by a large box of wood, and suddenly the denial and disbelief have all but vanished. The reality has set in. This isn't some big nightmare, even though it's felt like nothing else since my plane landed in Texas. This is real. This is happening.

Dad is dead.

I hear someone clear their throat and I tear my eyes away from the coffin with an effort. I try to get my thoughts together and I notice Luke staring at me strangely, maybe wondering why I didn't have it all together like I always did. I make myself not look at him either. This is hard enough as it is.

I close my eyes for a minute and begin to speak, thinking maybe if I can't see the other people, then this will somehow be easier. "I had a conversation with my sister earlier that reminded me of Dad, for some reason. Years ago, when I just become a cop, green as a blade of grass, I was assigned to this case where a young woman had been raped and murdered behind a supermarket somewhere. "

I hear a stir of unease at such a disturbing topic being brought up at a funeral and I open my eyes. Mom, in particular, is glaring at me as if the first words out of my mouth were supposed to have been, 'Dad was my hero'. I ignore her and them, knowing suddenly that this has nothing to do with anyone else here.

"I was telling Dad about the case, about how badly she had been beaten, and who could do such a thing, how could people be so cruel. I hadn't ever seen anything quite like what this woman had gone through and I didn't know quite how to deal with it yet. I asked my father how could someone do something like that to someone so good, so innocent, and my Dad stopped me right there. He wanted to know exactly how I knew this woman, this victim, had been innocent or good. He asked, how did I know she wasn't a terrible woman who had done awful things in her life? How did her being a victim of a horrible crime necessarily transcribe her to sainthood?"

"I thought that was a terrible thing to say, making her sound like she had deserved what she had endured. I thought he didn't have any right to speak ill of the dead. When I told him this, Dad said he'd rather have someone speak ill truths of him than sweet sounding lies. I was so angry. I promised him I'd tell all the awful truths I could think of when I was standing at his funeral, and he smiled then and said 'Good'. It's funny. I think that was one of the only times Dad and I ever argued about anything serious, really. But I also think that's why I'm the one standing here today, giving his eulogy. Not because I'm the most loved son or the eldest son, or even the son who has always taken care of the family business. Dad wanted me to give his eulogy because he knew I wouldn't forget that I promised to tell the truth. I promised I wouldn't spin our usual sweet sounding lies."

I look at Jennifer then and she stares back at me, an intent look on her face. My eyes shift to Mom. Her eyes are narrowed into slits and she's ever so subtly shaking her head, as if warning me not to say what I was going to. I look back to the coffin.

"Dad wasn't perfect," I say. "He wasn't a bad man but he wasn't a great one, either. He worked hard for a living, helped support a wife and seven children, went to church, and believed firmly in things like justice and truth. He didn't believe things like that were concepts, airy ideas for people to pull apart and analyze as relative. He thought justice and truth and love and freedom were all real, solid things, made of black and white and forming the cornerstones of our lives. Dad was an idealistic man, a man who wanted great things and tried to achieve them with as much effort as he could summon, sometimes more. Dad tried to be the best man he could be. He was a good man. But he wasn't perfect."

"He worked hard for a living but he also worked longer hours than he should of, neglecting things that needed to be dealt with away from his career. He was nice and friendly but he did have a temper and it didn't usually take a lot to set that temper off. He loved his family, his wife and children, but he didn't love all his children equally, not the way the ideal parent is supposed to. I guess I was the lucky one, really. I was the favorite son, the good son. I usually pleased him. And I wanted to please him, I wanted him to think the world of me. There was a long time in my life when not a lot mattered to me but making my father happy. And when that wish wasn't as strong, wasn't the all-consuming desire it had been before, I still wanted to make people happy, and I surrogated others as my father figure, trying to have them believe in me the same way my father used to. That, of course, didn't always work, and it took me a long time to figure out that while it's good for other people to like you, you have to learn to be proud of yourself. And I did that. In Vegas."

I take a deep breath. David and Marianne actually have their hands on Mom, as if to keep her from springing at me. I lock my eyes on my mother's face and keep them there, wishing to see something behind that surfacing venom.

"I hadn't talked to Dad in a long time," I say, my eyes still on my mother's face. "I wanted to but I didn't. I couldn't come when Dad needed me and I allowed others to keep me away when I should have taken the first plane out, not caring about what people said. I can't use that excuse anymore. I should have come, even if nobody welcomed me. I wish. . .I wish I could have seen Dad before he left us. I wish I had flown here, now that he's gone. Because Dad didn't have to be perfect for me to love him, or for any of you to love him. All of you, you're thinking of the good times that you and Dad shared together, those moments that make you sad that he's gone. But the truth is, Dad wasn't like that all the time. He wasn't perfect. I know there were times when Dad just pissed you guys off."

There is a nervous laughter in the crowd and I know I have hit a few people, at least. I take my eyes away from my mother's face and finally allow them to look at Luke. He is staring at me as if he's never seen me before.

"The thing is, even though you have those memories that you're trying to avoid, those moments in your mind where Dad wasn't the great man that he was supposed to be but just a total jackass like all of us can be sometimes, that doesn't mean you didn't love Dad, or that he wasn't worthy of your love. Love isn't about perfection. It can't be, otherwise you wouldn't have anybody to love or depend upon. Everybody has faults and quirks and oddities. Everybody makes mistakes. Dad made his, I've made mine, and I'm sure y'all have made a few from time to time. Maybe you're even angry at someone right now whose made a mistake, someone whose done something to hurt. Now, you may have the right to never speak to that person again, and that's your decision, of course, but if you really do love them, if you really, honestly love them, then let it go. Let it go because forgiveness can be a beautiful thing and not something easily gotten from a pine box."

I pause and let my eyes linger on Luke's face a second longer before they find their way back to the coffin again. I imagine Dad again, the way I had seen him as a child, tall and larger than life, the way he is now, lying dead in that coffin. I begin to speak again as the I feel that quiet, piercing regret surge through me, and my voice cracks for the first time since I began the eulogy.

"Dad wasn't perfect but I loved him. And I wasn't perfect but Dad loved me. And I'm sorry, Dad, I'm really, really sorry. I should have come and I didn't. I wish I could change it. I wish I could change a lot of things. But I can't and I hope you can forgive me and be at peace, wherever you are." My eyes sting a bit but I don't cry and I close my eyes in prayer. "Amen," I say and silently leave the platform with no further ending. As the pastor begins to speak again, I notice a good deal of the crowd is silent, looking more perplexed than moved, but everyone in my family is crying, except, of course, Mom.

I decide that getting my throat ripped out isn't on my list of things to do and go to stand by Luke instead, who is swallow reflexively, as if working very hard on not letting any more tears fall out. I pretend to look at the ground while surreptiously glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, and ask, "You okay, man?"

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'll be okay." He laughs a dry laugh that you can somehow still hear his tears in. "That was some eulogy."

"Well, I always was one hell of a public speaker."

Luke laughs again and he rubs his eyes vigorously. He looks at me, then down at the ground and says quietly, "I missed you, man."

"I missed you, too," I say and hug him, abandoning any false pretense of "manly appearances". We hold there for a second and then Luke steps back, seeming worried.

"Does it seem wrong to you that Dad had to die for us to talk to each other again?" Luke asks me. I immediately shake my head.

"No. I think Dad would be happy. His death wasn't useless, or, at least, he wouldn't have considered it to be so. He used to worry that his death would mean nothing, that it would be just some inconsequential thing."

"I didn't know that."

"It was just this thing I remember," I say. "It's not important."

We stand silently together for awhile while the minister finishes up the ceremony. I know that things aren't perfect between us again but I think that's okay. That was the whole point of the eulogy, after all. Love isn't about perfection.

The ceremony winds down and slowly people begin to drop flowers on Dad's coffin. I'm not the first or the last to drop my own rose. I just walk up and let them go. "I love you, Dad," I tell him and hope that he can hear somewhere, wherever he actually is.

Never crying and not speaking, I leave the cemetery and Dad's body behind.


	7. Nine

Off: hey, thanks for all the reviews. Trust me, it definitely means something to me. Ok, so I lied sometime before. This is the last chap in Texas then we'll go on back to Vegas for another couple of chapters, and then it should be done. Remember that I changed the ending of The Stalker, although that will be more important next chapter. Oh, and I can't remember who reviewed it right now, but somebody thought I should have made this an R rating. They're probably right. I'm not going to change it now but just in general remember that there are bad words and unhappy feelings. After all, that's what angst is all about.

Warning: spoilers for Overload.

"Nine"

I.

"Can't you stay longer?"

I shake my head. "Sorry, Lilly. My flight leaves in an hour and a half. I've got to get going." I don't add how desperate I am to leave here and how Texas is more and more starting to mirror Hell in my mind. I was always considered tactful.

"Wouldn't your boss-"

"Lilly," I interrupt, not being able to handle it anymore. "This isn't about work. I. . .I need to go home, Lilly. This isn't home for me anymore."

Lilly isn't crying but she looks about two steps away from it. "I could talk to Mom," Lilly says. "I could try to get her to. . .to understand. To be nicer to you."

"It's not just that," I say, and it's not, though getting away from Mom would be enough of a reason to leave. Thankfully, she isn't in the kitchen with us right now. The only words she's spoken since the funeral is how she doesn't want to have to look on me. David, Marianne, and Richard are in the other room, trying to get her to talk to me before I leave. I've already said my goodbyes to them. Now I'm left with Lilly, Jennifer, and Luke, and how to explain that I think my head might explode if I stay any longer in this house. I need to be out of here, out of the memories and the discord. I need to be somewhere else.

And I miss Vegas and it's bright lights. I miss my other family and friends.

"I've made a home in Vegas," I try to explain. "I don't know if I ever meant it to be; I just needed to get out of here, and Vegas was like my own version of the Night of the Pifflings." I ignore the confused looks. "But now it's different. My job and my life there. . .it's not just some place to hide, to bury my head in and wait until the end. It's not an intermission in my life, the place I live for a while before I come back to Texas and sort my life out. Vegas is home for me now, and I need to be there. I need to get home."

Lilly falls silent and rubs her eyes. Luke bites his lower lips. It's a habit of his when he's nervous.

"Maybe you could visit more often," he says quickly, as if afraid that his nose is going to get bitten off for even making such a simple gesture. "Maybe you could come around more."

"Maybe," I say, appreciating the sentiment while secretly thinking 'not a chance in hell'. "Or maybe you guys could come fly out to Vegas once in awhile." I grin suddenly, and the grin isn't forced. "It's a fun place to spend a couple of days."

"We'll see," Lilly says, smiling. "Maybe after the baby. There's not a lot of point in going to Vegas if I can't even enjoy some alcohol."

I laugh and then glance at the clock. "Need to get going," I say. "Is there any point in even asking Mom for a ride?"

"I'll drive you," Jen offers suddenly. She's been silent for awhile and I look at her, surprised.

"Sure," I say. "Thanks."

Richard walks in then, looking almost apologetic. "Mom's gone to her room," he says, eyes never quite focusing on my face. "She isn't going to come out 'till you're gone. She won't see you."

I sigh, not surprised but not happy. "All right." I give Luke and Lilly a quick hug each and stop in mid-motion as I move towards Richard, who doesn't look sure if he wants a hug or not. I pick up my suitcase instead and shake his hand. Richard stands, nearly immobile, and opens his mouth to speak. I wait but no words come out of his lips, and I'm not sure I want to hear anything anyway. I don't think Richard and I are ready to talk yet. Some things never get resolved, no matter how hard you try.

"I'll see you," I say and he nods back to me, his mouth closing.

I stare at them all for a minute, wishing I had something to add, something to say that would make everything okay, but I don't. We all know now that I'm really not perfect and sometimes there is no moral lesson, just an ending of a part of your life.

I turn for the door silently and Luke calls out my name, equally unsatisfied with just this quick goodbye. He looks directly at me and the apology on his face is even stronger than the one in his voice. He says what I think Richard can not.

"I'm sorry."

I nod. "Me too," I say, and follow Jennifer out of the house.

II.

Jen and I ride mostly in silence while listening to her Creedence Clearwater Revival CD. Neither of us particularly like country music and we're both often annoyed with that Texas stereotype, that all those who hail from here initially idolize Lone Star. The week before I left, Greg jokingly asked me if all my exes really did live in Texas. I made him process the extremely disgusting public bathroom at the next homicide we worked together.

I missed Greg. I missed them all. I knew that none of them were family, that none of them considered me to be family, but all the same I had formed them to fit that category in my head, to take place, I guess, of what I had lost. Somewhere along the line, Sara, Warrick, and Greg had blurred the lines of friendship in my mind with siblings, and Catherine seemed to be somewhere between my exceptionally cool aunt and my cold, frigid mother, depending on her mood. Grissom, of course, was the obvious one. Grissom was the mentor, the one I had needed so desperately to believe in me in my first years in Vegas. Grissom played the father with frightening accuracy of someone who had never had children.

_Dad_, I thought and looked out the window, not wanting to think about either of them right now.

"Penny," Jen says and I glance at her.

"Huh?"

"Penny for your thoughts," she clarifies.

"Where's the penny?"

Jen rolls her eyes, reaches with one hand into the glove compartment as she still drives, and tosses me a nickel. "Now I get five thoughts," she says and I laugh. "What were you thinking about?"

"Family," I say honestly.

"No wonder you looked so unhappy," Jen says dryly. I don't respond. She watches me, hesitates, and then says, "Why won't you tell Mom why you really couldn't come?"

"Aw, are you _still_ harping on that?" I ask, closing my eyes. "I told you. I tried to talk to Mom and she wouldn't listen."

"And you're too proud to make her listen," Jen says, her voice even dryer than before. "All right. Let's say that it's just your sense of machismo. Why won't you tell me? Or Lilly or Marianne or hell, even Luke? You're not just hiding it from Mom. You're hiding it from all of us."

"You'd just go talk to Mom," I say.

Jen snorts. "Bullshit. I wouldn't and you know it. What's the real reason?"

I hear a crashing sound in my mind, replaying from years ago. His voice, high pitched, nervous. Adrenaline pumping through my body.

A gunshot. The sound louder than anything I've ever heard.

Whiteness. Utter and complete. Then darkness, and pain.

I open my eyes and literally have to shake my head to clear it. "I don't want to think about," I say. My arms slide over my stomach almost unconsciously and I pull them away. "I try not to go back to places I wish I hadn't been."

"Like what happened to you a couple of years ago?" Jen asks. 'Or what happened to you when you were nine?" She waits but I stay silent. "Sooner or later, Nicky, you're going to need to talk to someone. It isn't healthy to keep things buried inside, pretending they don't exist."

I can't help it. I look at her incredulously. "Are you trying to say that you're the sane one out of the two of us?"

"Oh, fuck no. I've got my own problems and issues and traumas, just like everyone. I'm no model for absolute sanity. Nobody with the last name Stokes is."

"Well, then don't you think you're being a bit hypocritical?" I ask. "You're asking me to open up, to talk about what I clearly don't want to discuss, but you're not talking about yourself. You don't go on about your life."

Jen smiled wryly. "I would," she says, "but I wouldn't know what to say." She takes a long breath and says, "it's not the same with us, Nicky. You have these things that have happened to you, things that you try to shut out and pretend aren't real, things that you need to talk about. Me, I'm different. I don't know where I went wrong, when I became so unhappy all of the time. I could never say something like I died 27 years ago, not with any real sense of honesty, because I don't know when I died. I just know that somewhere along the line, things began to change. What imbued the essence of Jennifer had little to do with me. Jennifer just kind of became this slightly neurotic, intensely bitter, sarcastic workaholic that everybody knows me as. Nobody remembers me as anything else, and sometimes I don't think I do either."

She pauses and I say her name but she cuts me off quickly.

"That's not you," she continues, looking out at the road ahead of us. "You changed to cope with how your life went just like everybody, but somehow you managed to make everybody think that you're happier than you are. Bu you aren't happy, Nick, I know you aren't. I'm not good at talking or comforting or holding hands and being there, but I am good at seeing things, and I can see you, Nick, hurting, grieving, silently, still trying to maintain what everyone knows about Nick: happy, optimistic, naïve, perfect. But you're not and you know it, and so do I. What happened when you were nine, Nicky? Please tell me."

I looked at her and then away, my hands clenching slowly into fists to keep them from fidgeting. The only person I had ever told about the babysitter was Catherine, and that somehow didn't surprise me. Catherine reminds me a lot of my mother and Jennifer; she has my mother's iciness and Jen's direct brashness. The only thing separating her from donning the name 'Stokes' and really being a member of this family was her affection for her daughter, and enough sex appeal to create the nickname 'sex kitten'.

But I had told Catherine. I had never planned on telling anyone. I had told her and I had hated it. There was nothing good feeling about sharing, no light at the end of the tunnel. But I had done it.

Of course, Catherine had threatened me into it. Told me she'd take me off the case we were working on, the one I had become so obsessed with. It was probably that, more than anything, that made me tell her.

Apparantly, Jennifer came up with the same idea, because she suddenly said, "Nick, I won't let you go home. I'll pull the car over right now and make you walk to the airport. We're not that far away, certainly within a quick driving distance, but you'll never make your flight and you'll be stuck here, waiting."

"Petty threats," I say, pretending this is not an idea that seriously disturbs me. "I thought you could do better than that."

"Better than being stuck in Texas longer than necessary?"

She has a point.

"I mean it, Nick," Jen says unnecessarily because I know she means it. I know how Jennifer is. She doesn't bother with false threats. She's perfectly willing to carry out almost anything to get what she wants. I love Jennifer but she can be ruthless, just like Catherine, just like Mom. And I meant what I had said before. I needed to get home.

I continue to look out the window. The cars and the trees fly, quickly vanishing behind us. I like watching them disappear from sight. It makes it easier somehow.

"Mom and Dad wanted to take us to the show, something we could all enjoy," I say quiet, watching the world's vanishing act, somehow wishing I could be a part of it. "We had been planning it for a month or so because everybody's schedules were so conflicting with work and school and soccer practice and the like. Mom was sick of everyone being split part, doing their own thing. She wanted to do something as a family together. Only Luke and I got sick. Actually, Luke got me sick. Maybe I never forgave him for that. I don't know."

"Mom was mad at Luke for something. I really don't remember what now. She wanted to go to the show anyway, to punish him for whatever he did. She promised me she'd take me to the show alone some other day and she'd buy me all the candy and soda I wanted when I was feeling better. Mom did all that right in front of Luke. She really can be a bitch sometimes."

"She called Amy, our regular sitter. Do you remember her? The one with those godawful ugly orange curls?" I don't bother to turn to see if Jennifer nods. "She couldn't come. Had a date, or something. I remember being glad and at the same time wondering who would want to go out with her. Guess I'm not always so nice, either."

I hear Jennifer's mouth open, as if she wants to speak, but she doesn't, and I'm glad. I want this over with and the less she interrupts, the quicker it will be.

"So Mom called around and finally got a last minute babysitter. Molly Watkins. She lived down a couple of streets, the daughter of a friend of a friend. She came over and Mom thanked her and then you guys all left."

I hesitated then, frowning. Back story wasn't so hard to do; I could talk endlessly about the parts that didn't matter. I didn't want to talk about what happened next. That meant I had to think about it.

"Molly liked Luke right away. She was playing with him and tickling him, almost totally ignoring me completely, and then I saw her hands touching his thighs, rising up his shorts. I didn't know what was happening, was confused about why the babysitter would be doing something like that, but somehow I knew this wasn't good, wasn't like Mom seeing if Luke had had an accident. I told her to stop and she did. She stopped and she looked at me. I had never seen that kind of look on anybody's face. It was so. . ." I trailed off and closed my eyes. I could picture Molly's face with in my mind with stunning accuracy over 27 years. I decided to move on. "She asked me what I was going to do about it. Called me Big Boy. Mom and Dad used to call me that, their good 'big boy'. I started to freak out anytime they'd say that after that night. I couldn't handle it."

"I remember that," Jennifer says softly. I resolutely keep turned towards the window. I don't want to see Jennifer's face right now.

"She wanted to know what I'd do for her. She told me if I made her happy, she'd leave Luke alone. I didn't understand exactly what that meant, what she was asking, but I agreed because Luke was my little brother and it was my job to protect him. I think, in a way, that's what hurt the most when he and Julia slept together. I had labeled myself his protector, the one who kept him from having to do. . .what I did. And he, he betrayed me, which really isn't fair to say. Molly took me into the bedroom and Luke never saw anything. I don't think he even remembers that night. He was so young. He only came in afterwards and I made him sit with me in the room while Molly went out to watch television. I didn't want him anywhere near her; I kept telling myself I had to protect him, only I couldn't seem to make myself do much of anything. I was just laying there, still so warm and yet I was shivering. I just laid there and waited for Mom to get home so I could tell her what I happened and she could make things better."

"Only when y'all got home, something had happened. Mom was really pissed off, even at me. Dad ended up having to leave to go talk to some client in jail (this was just before he became a judge), and when I was just lying in my bed, not moving, Mom didn't ask me what was wrong, just what the hell I was doing. She kept asking me, so angry at whatever it was that had pissed her off, and she started shaking me a bit, ignoring what I was trying to say until I just stopped trying to say it. I think a part of me has always hated her, after that. She had calmed down by the next morning and she asked me again, more gently, what had happened, but by then it was just. . .it was just too late. I decided I never wanted anyone to know what had happened. I never wanted anyone to see. I was angry and ashamed and I. . .well, it doesn't really matter. Nothin' in the past does, right?"

Jennifer is silent and finally I make myself look over at her, though my hands are still clenched together. She's staring at me, only occasionally glancing at the road, and she isn't crying, but her face is very pale, as if she's too shocked to cry. "It was the popcorn," she says finally, her voice softer than I think I've ever heard it. "Richard was being a baby and I poured all of the popcorn over on his head. He started having a tantrum, causing a scene. We got kicked out of the theatre. Mom was so embarrassed; she wouldn't talk to me for three days." She swallows and suddenly she does look like she's about to cry. "Nick, I'm so-"

"Don't," I say and try to make my voice sound steadier than it is. We stare at each other and I know that neither of us have the words to make the other person feel okay, and yet I have to say something, because that's who I am. I echo what I told Catherine. "It's what makes a person, right?" I ask and need her to agree so I don't have to start crying myself.

"Yeah," Jennifer says quietly, and we arrive at the airport.

Off: okay so that's done and just for anybody whose annoyed that there was no huge face off with the mom, I'm not actually done with her yet. She's too much fun to write. Heh heh heh heh heh. Next chapter: back in Vegas.


	8. The Wicked Witch is Not Dead Yet

Okay, this chapter's up and I think there are one or two more after it. Spoilers: the stalker. I changed the end of the stalker a little, so just be warned. And no, this is not a greg/nick fic before I get asked. They're friends but no slash, at least, not on this one.

"The Wicked Witch is Not Dead Yet"

"Unfucking believable. The Texans are winning the Patriots. Who thought Houston could win out ANYBODY?"

"Hey, hey, hey," I protest, holding my hands up in mock defense of my state. "The Texans aren't that bad."

Greg gives me a scornful, contemptuous look. "Riiight. And Grissom isn't that strange of a guy."

This makes me laugh so hard I choke on the beer I'm holding and have to set it down on the table while I relearn how to intake oxygen. Greg asks lightly if he needs to call 911 or something like that, and I tell him, between coughs, to fuck off. I'm having a good night.

A while ago, Greg had started suckering me into going out with him every other Friday night to a wide variety of nightclubs in Vegas, some of them a little too varied for my tastes. My sort of revenge for these forced outings were making him watch Monday night football with Warrick and me at my place. Greg often made exaggerated sighs, mocked the football players, and claimed he wouldn't even be around watching if it wasn't for the cheerleaders, but the truth was that I had converted him into a football fan, and he was surprisingly good at betting on what team would win. In fact, my wallet was beginning to hate me for bringing Greg into the football picture in the first place.

Tonight it's just him and me hanging out, watching probably the most amazing football upset in a century. Normally Warrick would be here too but he just finished pulling off another triple and told us if he didn't get some sleep he'd be a stunt double for any George A. Romero flick. Greg had told him to go home; he'd like to "keep his brain in his skull for just a little longer".

I manage to breathe in and out again without coughing or 911 support and lean back into the couch cushions, sipping my beer. I had been home a week and two days since the flight from Texas. Once we had reached the airport, Jen and I hadn't said much else to each other, except that we loved one another and we promised to call more often. So far, neither of us have called yet, and I haven't heard from anyone in else in Texas either. Somehow, that doesn't surprise me much. Promises are just words. They don't really mean anything.

God I wonder, when did I start thinking like _that_?

Greg eyes me over his beer and begins to look serious, never a good sign. I'm already on my third beer but Greg's still on his first. Our first night out at some dance club with horrendous music, I found out just what a lightweight Greg is. More than two shots of anything would have him passed out on the floor before you could say 'softie'.

I have a sudden feeling that Greg is going to start prying at me, wondering what's wrong with me, when I changed. The first couple of days at work, people still acted cautious around me, as if waiting for me to crack and reveal the sadness in my soul. When I guess it finally became apparent that I wasn't about to have a breakdown at work, sobbing about my dead father in the ground, people started acting normal again, used to me being "reliable Nicky". Everybody acted this way, except two: Grissom, who continued to give me strange, peering looks as if I was some sort of a specimen for scientific observation, and Greg.

"What are you thinking about?" Greg asks, drinking his beer slowly. I shrug and don't really respond. I don't have anything to say.

Greg continues to watch me. "You've been just a little different, you know, since Texas." He says this quietly, softly, and as slowly as he drinks his beer, as if worried that he's speaking out of turn and liable for a screaming match. "You've been just a little more. . .quiet, I guess, or darker or something. I don't know."

I shrug again, trying to keep this as casual as I can. "Well, stuff's happened," I say, as if this is any kind of a revelation, "but you don't need to worry about me. I'm doing okay."

"Are you?" he asks, and I know that he doesn't believe it for a second.

I also know he won't press it if I deny anything being wrong, and I open my mouth to do so when there's a knock on the door. I look at it, surprised, and then turn to Greg. "I guess Warrick decided to come after all," I say, and then glance at the game, which is already in the fourth quarter. "He's kind of late."

Greg shakes his head. "No way," he says. "You didn't see him this afternoon before he left. He really was dead on his feet. I mean corpse, coffins, and all."

I smile at that and get up. I can't think of who it else might be, certainly nobody from work, and I'm all ready to see some sort of new tenant or neighbor needing to borrow eggs or something, when I open the door and see Mom.

My jaw doesn't literally drop but it might as well. I take a step backwards in total surprise and don't say anything, too shocked to really speak. Mom takes this step backward as an invitation and walks into the room.

She looks good, of course. Mom always paints herself upright. Her hair is fashioned perfectly, not a wisp out of place, and her makeup is impeccable, taking at least five years off of her real age. She has an essence that screams good breeding, and if you could even consider her to still be somewhat beautiful, if only except the fact that she is scowling like mad and her eyes are sharp crystals of blue ice.

Before I can make my mouth articulate actual words, my mother turns her infamous glare on me and says, "I just want you to know that I thought your eulogy was disgusting and I think your father would have hated it. It was despicable, talking about his faults like that in front of all those people, speaking ill of the dead! You should be ashamed of yourself, and I hope you are, hope that you've realized your own, personal issues with your father was no reason to use his funeral as an excuse for some kind of personal therapy."

"That wasn't what it was about," I say but Mom cuts me off.

"I just want you to know that I don't ever, _ever_ want to see you back in my home again, and if you do come I'll get a restraining order against you, legally keeping you away." Mom steps closer to me and her scowl becomes more of a sneer, bringing new life to the words 'contempt' and 'disgust'. "I look at you and I don't see a man anymore, a son who has grown up to understand what it is to be a responsible, decent human being. I look at you and I see a spoiled brat, a boy who never grew up at all, who's playing cop and pretending to be the hero when he has no idea what it means to be out in the line of duty. I don't look at you and see my son anymore, or anything that connects you to this family. You aren't worth enough to be a part of it. I will no longer recognize you as my son. I refuse to bear you any longer!"

There is a long moment of silence. Finally, I say calmly, "Okay. You're no longer my mother. Did you really come all the way from Texas to tell me that?"

My mother stares at me, still glaring but obviously surprised, as if she expected some kind of bigger reaction, some kind of showdown between the two of us, forces of good and evil or something similarly melodramatic. I think she needs to feel victorious, to walk out as I'm begging for her to come back, to forgive me for these sins. I know that's what she needs because I can see the righteousness in her face; she wants to still have power over me, to make me sorry for all that I have done. I keep my face steady but suddenly I am pissed off, and I have to put my hands behind my back so she won't see me clenching my fists. How dare she come here and act like she still reigns over me, me, who she's just disowned as a son. She could do whatever she wanted in Texas but we aren't in Texas anymore. This is my home, dammit! She doesn't belong here.

My mom recovers quickly from my apparent lack of reaction, and she sniffs disdainfully as she glances around the apartment, pretending that her precious ego hasn't been bruised. "I wouldn't have bothered coming at all," she says, eyeing the dishes piling up next to the sink with a barely concealed aversion, "but your phone number has changed since I last talked to you, as well as apparently your address. I think I liked your other home better, Nicholas. It was actually rather spacious and well decorated, a nice, good looking home. This one is a glorified bachelor's pad. Why ever did you get rid of that nice house for this utter dump?"

"Well, the creepy, murdering guy living upstairs was sort of not a bonus," Greg says suddenly from the couch. I look back at him, surprised, almost having forgotten that he was there. My mother has that affect on people.

My mom turns her cool glare onto Greg, who sinks back a little into the cushions but stares at her incredulously anyway. "If Nigel Crane had been living upstairs, waching me sleep," he continues, staring at my mom, "I'd have gotten the fuck out of dodge too."

I watch Greg, surprised, I suppose, at his lack of timidity when he is usually so hesitant in the face of authority. I am also surprised about what he's just said. Though I guess it was sort of obvious why I moved from my house on Archer Lane, I had never once spoken to him about Nigel Crane and what that had felt like, to know that he had been there, watching me, every second I was home. To feel eyes on me while I was taking a shower, watching TV, trying to sleep. I didn't last three days back in the house before I made the decision to move. Still, I don't expect Greg to think about things like that.

My mother raises an eyebrow at Greg's wildly colored shirt and very spiky hair, and then turns back to me. "Nick, who is this. . . jester. . .and what on Earth is he babbling about?"

"Nothing," I say quickly, giving a hard look to Greg. "Listen, Mom-"

"You didn't tell her?" Greg asks. I turn back to him, willing him with my eyes to shut up, which he appears to ignore. He stares at me with wide eyes and then stands up from the couch and walks over to where my mom and I are. Greg continues to watch me for a minute before finally looking at my mother. "You don't know what happened to Nick?"

"All I know about Nick is that when his father had a stroke, when he could have been dying and needed his son's attention and love, Nick was nowhere to be seen. He abandoned his ailing father for his love of a pathetic career of no real value. He didn't even call back for the better part of a week and insisted that he couldn't leave until the month was nearly over, all the while his father lay in a hospital, wondering where his beloved son was and why he didn't care about him anymore."

Greg's eyebrows rose at what he obviously considers condescending hyperbole but apparently restrains his sarcasm to ask, "Was this in May?"

"Shut up, man," I tell him. "This isn't your problem."

Greg ignores this. "May?" he asks again.

Mom throws her hands up in the air and rolls her eyes, as if answering this question was the most tiresome bother in her life. "I still don't see how this pertains to _you_," she says, drawing herself up, "but yes, Nick's father's stroke was May 8th, 2002, six or so in the morning, and Nick was nowhere to be seen. Now, do you have some sort of ridiculous alibi you'd like to claim on behalf of your friend?"

"Greg," I say again and only for him to interrupt me

"Yeah," Greg says flatly, ignoring my glaring at him, "on May 8th, 2002, six or so in the morning, Nick was in his fifth hour of surgery after being shot in the stomach and trying his hardest not to die himself, so I think you might want to forgive him for not being able to make a phone call. He was busy recovering in the hospital after sort of nearly dying."

Mom stares at Greg. Her mouth is open and motionless, as if someone has just hit the pause button on the remote for her expressions. Very slowly, she turns to look at me, as if she doesn't know who I am or how I even got here. "Nick," she asks, "is this true?"

"Yeah," I say, "it's true."

She pauses again, becoming motionless for a few minutes before her mouth begins to move, trying to find words to describe whatever she is thinking. Finally, she gives up on this and says, "I don't know what to say."

I shrug. Maybe this is where I should describe what happened to me in detail, explain what really happened and how sorry I am, but I can't do any of that because I'm still pissed. "There isn't anything to say. It's in the past, right?" My voice doesn't sound forgiving and I don't really bother trying to adjust it.

Mom and Greg continue watching me with open mouths until I can't take it anymore. I'm sick of people looking at me and I'm not going to wait around until they've had their fill. "Look," I say, "feel free to hang around here, but I've got to get going."

My mom holds up her head, regaining some of her eternal sense of composure. "Don't be ridiculous," she says as if that's ridiculous is always how I act. "If you don't want me here, kick me out. This is, after all, your home."

"You know something?" I ask her, watching her eyes. "This place somehow doesn't feel like home with you in it."

"Nick," Greg says and puts his hand on my arm. I shake it off. I can't be here anymore, not with Mom, not with Greg, not with anyone. I need somewhere where I can just be quiet, where I don't have to worry if I'm fooling anybody with this "I'm okay" look I thought I had perfected. I need somewhere without friends or family and I'm not going to find it here.

"Let go of me," I tell him, and grab my jacket and leave.


	9. Forgiveness

"Forgiveness"

People are starting to avoid me at work. I'm glad.

It's been two days since my mom decided to show up in Vegas. I haven't seen her since. I'm hoping she's flown back to Texas with the knowledge that my being shot and going through about nine hours of surgery wasn't really an adequate excuse for not being around to visit Dad after his stroke. I hope this because I want her gone. It's easier having her out of my life. Not having to care.

Even as I think this, I know it's not true. If I could really make myself not care, then I'd be able to shake myself out of this bad mood that I've been in for the last two days. I'm pissed at Mom, pissed at Greg, and generally just sort of pissed off at anything or anyone that comes my way. More than anything, I want to fast forward a couple of months to where this is all past stuff, all history. Everyone will remember that I was a little upset after my dad died but that was months ago and now things are better. I'm ready to skip to where things are all better again.

I don't know if things ever get better. Maybe you have to rewind your life to find that time.

But who am I kidding? At nine I learned that childhood isn't all it's cracked up to be.

It's easier when people step out of the way so they won't have to confront you. Yesterday, Bobby saw me heading down the corridor and quickly hid in another room until I passed by, so he wouldn't have to tell me that there was no evidence on the home invasion gone wrong case I had been working on. He didn't know I saw him, and I didn't bother to let him know. I'd rather people avoid me than have them ask me what's wrong.

The only three people in the lab who haven't tried to steer clear of me whenever they can are Greg, Catherine, and Grissom. Catherine, not in an excellent mood herself, came over to me after we finished interviewing a suspect last night and asked me directly what I was being so bitchy about. I shrugged her off and she hadn't come back, so maybe she decided she just didn't care enough at the moment or she had enough on her plate to deal with. That was fine by me. Greg had tried to corner me a couple of times and I refused to discuss anything with him. I was still mad that he had told my mom what happened. I could have told him it wasn't going to make any difference. It's not like she's going to care.

Then, of course, there is Grissom. Grissom is harder to deflect.

"You got a second, Nick?"

I don't look away from my microscope. The fact of the matter is that I have several seconds, minutes even, for Grissom to attempt to probe into my life, because my case is going nowhere and I'm getting close to packing it up for the night. But I don't want to talk to Grissom. I don't want to talk to anyone. I just want them to leave me alone.

Grissom, naturally, doesn't care about this. He picked some week to try and learn how to be human.

"I'm kind of busy, Gris," I say shortly, continuing to peer into the microscope, analyzing the single strand of hair found at the scene that was not the victim's. The case dealt with a young boy who had been sexually assaulted and then stabbed to death, and each piece of evidence was more conflicting than the next. Just another thing to brighten up my day.

"I know," he says. "Let's go to my office."

I lean back from the microscope and feel myself glaring sullenly at Grissom, as though I'm the teenage son who just learned he doesn't get to go to the huge party that night. I'm about to protest that I really don't have the time when I catch that look on Grissom's face. You see it there every now and then, but it's rare. It's the look the says "I just realized I'm the boss and I'm about to do something with it". One way or another, I'm going to his office, and the less fuss I make now, the easier it will be to slip away later.

I sigh and get up, following Grissom down the hall. He watches me as we walk; if he means to be subtle about it, he needs to start getting lessons. "You haven't been acting quite like yourself since you came back from Texas, Nick."

I make a noncommittal noise. I'm annoyed again, and I can't help but think that for all Grissom's wonderful genius, he continues to use what's probably the most inane and overdone comment any worried friend has ever made. After all, how can you not act like yourself anyway? You don't really get a choice in who you are.

"I've asked some of the others what they've thought of your behavior. Particularly, I questioned Greg a great deal, as I know you two are fairly good friends."

I want to say that good friends don't sell you out to your mom and your boss. Instead, I ask tightly, "What'd he say?"

"Not a lot," Grissom says. He continues to watch me in a way that's becoming immensely irritating. "He seemed to be worried about betraying your confidence. He was far less open than anybody else I asked. Still, he seemed to be worried."

I bite my lip, feeling a little bit bad about immediately assuming Greg had told everybody about my mom and what happened Monday night. I try to shrug it off, figuring I have reason to be mad at him anyway, and look at Grissom as he watches me, gauging the rise and fall of my mood based on physical indications. "I'm worried about you to, Nicky," Grissom says and briefly I wonder how long it's been since he called me that.

_That's not important. Dodge the comment. Make his worry sound frivolous. _

"Is that why you wanted to call me into your office?" I ask, as if such a thing is ridiculous and time consuming. "'Cause, if it is, I've got to tell you that I'm on this case right now, and I don't think that my own personal state of affairs should be inter-"

"It's not," Grissom interrupts, not bothering to hear the rest of my excuse. I realize we've arrived at his office. "Actually, you have a visitor."

I look at him, surprised, and then look into his office. Sitting with her back towards us is a woman with short hair, absently playing with a string of pearls around her neck. I know who she is before she turned. The pearls and the seven hundred dollar shoes she's wearing are a dead give away.

"Jesus Christ, what are you doing here?" I mutter under my breath, and then realize that's exactly what Luke had said to me when I had first walked into Hank's Pub. Grissom looks at me sharply and I shrug at him, not knowing how to explain. We step into the office.

"Hi, Mom," I say dryly and sit down in the chair next to her.

"Nick," she says. Her voice is regal and aloof, as always; you'd mistake her for a British queen of some sort if she didn't have the deep Southern accent. "I've just been in discussion with your supervisor, Mr. Grissom." She glances around the room, an expression of slight disdain passing over her face as she notices some of the more unique items on the shelves, particularly the dead pig that catches everybody's eye. "Interesting place," she comments.

"I try," Grissom says with a very light smile on his face. I think it gives him some kind of weird pleasure to know that his office creeps out everybody. He stands in the doorway, watching us a minute, and then says, "I'll just step out a moment to let you to talk."

"No, please wait, Mr. Grissom," my mom says before he can leave. "Of course, I've come to talk to my son, but I also would like to have a word with you, if I may. I'm most curious to your professional opinion on a certain matter."

Gris raised an eyebrow at her and then at me. He opened his mouth as if to protest and then abruptly shut it and sat down in his chair behind his desk. "What can I do for you, Mrs. Stokes?"

"Well, the truth of the matter is that Nick and I haven't maintained a very close relationship the past couple of years-"

"Mom!"

"-and apparently I've missed out on some of the more colorful episodes of my son's life. Recently, a young man who Nick has apparently befriended made mention of an incident a few years ago that involved and Nick and. . .some form of injury with work? The young man said that Nick had to have surgery."

I look at her. It occurs to me that Mom is waiting for Grissom to say, 'I don't know what you're talking about. Your son was never shot. He's the ungrateful bastard you've always thought he was'. I find myself biting my lip again and glance quickly at Grissom.

Grissom looks utterly nonplussed. The expression would be more comical if there wasn't a touch of hurt beneath the surprise. He looks at me for a long time and then slowly lets his eyes wander back to my mother. "Mrs. Stokes, are you talking about Nigel Crane?"

"I really couldn't say," my mom says, still poised as always. "I don't recall the name the young man spoke. Is it possible my son was shot more than once?"

Grissom looks back to me again. There was a very complete confusion to his eyes, as well as a sudden need to not be involved in other people's family matters. "Perhaps this is something I should leave you two alone to discuss," he says, starting to rise again. Clearly, he has little interest in being involved. This is understandable.

"Well, Nicholas refuses to tell me much of anything," my mother says, ignoring what Grissom obviously wants. He sits back down again. "And I have to say I was hoping for an unbiased opinion of whatever it was that transpired a few years ago."

Gris just sits there, looking utterly lost. "Well," he says, attempting another route to get out of this strange conversation, "I'm not entirely sure I could give you an unbiased opinion, Mrs. Stokes. We all feel very close to Nick here at work."

My mother's lips thinned into a very small smile. "I'm sure," she says in a way that means 'stop telling bullshit'. "But if you would just try, Mr. Grissom. It would mean a great deal to me."

Grissom looks at me, silently asking for my help. I can't help but smile wryly. I don't want him to talk about what happened. I don't want to have to think about it again. And yet, I can't help but be morbidly curious as to how Grissom saw that night.

In the hospital, I remember everybody visiting or bringing flowers, and I remember being secretly thrilled that Grissom took the time to show up and say hello. I remember what he told me when he was trying to explain Crane; he had talked about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, of the fascinating psychology behind it all. And I remember thinking for maybe the first time ever that Grissom didn't know shit.

I just shrug at Grissom. I don't really know what to do.

It becomes apparent that neither does he. He opens his mouth once, closes it, and then tries again. "Well, we were investigating the murder of Jane Galloway," he begins. "We discovered that the murderer had been living upstairs in her attic and had been watching her every movement, stalking her before he ultimately strangled her. We began to look at the repairmen Miss Galloway had used at certain utility companies. Nick, alongside another CSI, went to investigate Miss Galloway's cable repairman, Nigel Crane. At the apartment, Crane managed to surprise your son alone and pushed him out of a two story window."

My mother makes a small sound, almost like a gasp. I stare at her. I guess I wasn't expecting much of a reaction from her.

I know I'm having a reaction. I remember a blur of a face, quick hands, a sensation of lifting and then being pushed through the glass with incredible strength. I remember falling but not hitting the ground. In my memory it seems like the fall never stops.

Mom looks at me and I try not to look at her. I don't want her to see what I'm remembering. "Nick, that's-" Mom stops before she finishes and I wonder what she would have said. She sounds so unlike my mother, so much warmer and emotional.

She looks back at Grissom. "I thought that the young man said that Nick was shot."

"Yes," Grissom says, "but not then. After Nick was pushed through the window, he was taken to the hospital where the doctors said he was mostly okay. He suffered some injuries, which included a concussion, a few broken ribs, and a sprained wrist. He was sent home to get some rest. And then soon afterwards it was discovered by my team that Crane's obsession had little to do with Miss Galloway at all. He had actually been obsessed with your son."

Grissom pauses for a minute and watched me. I avoid his eyes like I had avoided Mom's and am beginning to wish I had told Grissom to keep his mouth shut about that night. I remember the crashing sound of the psychic's body breaking through the ceiling and slamming into the floor. I remember Nigel Crane's voice so well I can practically hear it in my head. I remember briefly wondering if my brains would really look like a strawberry cream swirl and I remember wondering which one of my friends would have to be the one to process my body when I was dead.

I remember the gun in my face and the fear that it brought. The knowledge that I couldn't be so lucky this time. Nobody was going to come to my rescue.

And I was wrong. People were coming. Just not soon enough.

"Crane had also installed Nick's cable," Grissom is saying and I try to pull my attention off of the memories, to focus on the words instead of the images. "That night in Nick's home there was a struggle. The police were called but they didn't arrive in enough time to prevent Crane from shooting Nick in the stomach."

My mom opens her mouth but no sound comes out. I don't move. I try to keep my face expressionless, as if hearing none of this bothers me, as if it all happened to someone else. Grissom watches us and continues, slowly.

"He was taken into surgery. The doctors managed to recover the bullet and stop the bleeding, although there were several complications that lengthened the surgery. He was in the hospital for a couple weeks before he was allowed to leave, and he left before the doctors were really satisfied with him leaving anyway. There were a few minor setbacks and a small, delayed infection, but eventually Nick healed and started working again." Grissom pauses and seems to hesitate for a moment before directly talking to my mother. "He was very lucky, Mrs. Stokes. There were a few moments there when we thought that we had lost him, when I was sure I was going to be processing the murder of one of my own CSI's. If I were you, I'd want to take some time and try to mend whatever went wrong in your relationship, because I am very serious when I say that we came very close to losing Nick a few years ago. We're lucky to have him alive. _I_ consider myself lucky to have him alive."

Grissom stands. "Now, I'm going to give you two some time alone. Don't worry to take as much time as you need; no one will bother you in here. Nick, when you're done, I'll be in the lab with your hair sample. We don't want to lose time on the evidence."

"Sure," I say, and my voice sounds hoarse, cracking just slightly. Grissom nods, looks as if he might want to say something else, and then quickly moves out of the room, closing the door behind him. My mother and I look at each other and I are silent for a long time.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me," she says finally, softly, staring at me as though she's never seen me before. "I can't believe you didn't yell at me and tell me to shut up and to listen to what had happened to you."

"I don't know why I didn't," I tell her. "Maybe, for awhile, it was easier to not be the good son."

She nods then, slowly, and we're quiet again. "We can't get back what we've lost, can we?" she asks finally, playing with her pearls again, a nervous habit most wouldn't notice. I shrug at her, knowing we've come too far, too long to be anything but honest. We've been lying for too long to pretend any longer.

"I don't think so," I say. "I think some things are never going to heal completely, no matter how many apologies or promises are said." And I think of Molly the babysitter, of protecting Luke, of waiting for Mom to come home. "Some things can never be fixed to be what they once used to be."

Mom nods again. "I have to catch a flight in a few hours," she says. "Back home to Texas."

"Okay," I say, and then ask, in a rush, "Are you still mad at me?"

Mom leans back in her chair and does something that I've never once in thirty-six years seen her do. She shrugs. "I don't know what I'm feeling," she says quietly. "But yes. I still think I am. I still feel. .. . I don't know."

"I'm still mad at you too, if it makes you feel any better," I tell her truthfully and she smiles at me for what feels like the first time in years. When I do the math I realize that it actually has been years.

"I feel like we should be doing some tearful reunion and saying our forgiveness," Mom says. "Isn't that what they do in the movies?"

"Since when do you watch movies?"

"I love the movies," Mom says, her nose in the air, composure slightly regained. "I just don't like anything after the 1950's. Lillian Gish, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart. . .now those were film stars."

I roll my eyes. "Boring, Mom," I tell her. "The Die Hards, Lethal Weapons, Indiana Jones. _Those_ are movies."

"Tasteless junk," Mom says. "I prefer my cinema to have a touch of class."

"I just like some humor," I tell her, and we're quiet again. I think we're both thinking the same thing: that we can't agree on anything. I guess family doesn't really have to have anything in common.

"I don't think we're ready for a tearful reunion yet," I tell her. "Luke and I didn't really have one either. I think some part of us is never really going to forgive each other for everything that's happened so I don't think we should lie and say that it will. I think I'm a little tired of telling lies all the time."

"All right," my mom says. "I don't really forgive you."

"Me either," I say. "Do you wanna get some breakfast?"

II.

We argue about where to eat for a long time before I finally convince her that IHOP is not second-rate. She orders crepes and coffee where I eat a huge stack of pancakes, and then some bacon, and then some eggs, and then some toast. She fails to be amused when I accidentally get maple syrup on her sleeve and tells me she isn't forgiving me for the three hundred dollar blouse I just cost her either. I tell her she can add it to my tab of the many unforgivable things I have ever done. She tells me that is the most trite metaphor she has ever heard and she very much sounds like my mother.

We only consider screaming at each other a few times during the meal. No one is slapped across the face and the breakfast is considered an unspoken success.

I drive her to the airport and we're almost late because of traffic. The flight attendant announces that all passengers need to board; the plane is getting ready to leave.

I kiss her on the cheek but we don't hug or touch in any other way. She opens her mouth as if she's about to tell me something important, but at the last minute ends up saying, "You got syrup on your shirt as well," and leaves quickly without saying goodbye. I think I'm glad for that too. Long goodbyes aren't my strong suit.

I leave the airport and head home. I've got to get laundry done and straighten the apartment before I get some sleep. Tonight's likely to be a long shift and I'll have to do some explaining, to Grissom, to Greg, and to Bobby and anybody else that's afraid I might kill them.

It occurs me as I drive that I'm almost happy, in a strange sort of way. I still feel strange about what's happened, still feel that my privacy has been invaded. But I feel sort of okay, too, like maybe life does sort of move on.

I turn up the radio and realize that either way, whether things or good or not so good or however they stand with Mom, she's currently flying back to Texas and I don't have to deal with her for a little while.

And because I'm not necessarily the good son anymore, the thought makes me grin and I sing along to the radio as I drive home.

Off: well, okay. There's that. I was thinking about doing a small sort of epilogue about nick and the other csi's a couple of days after, nothing too, too angsty. Otherwise, this is pretty much the end of the story. Please review and let me know what you think, and if I should do the epilogue or not.


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